The Farmington Hills Fire Department administers the Emergency Management (EM) program for the City of Farmington Hills. This entails planning to reduce the vulnerability of the entire community from all natural and human made disasters. The all hazards planning phases are based upon the Federal model and include prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. This is a community wide effort at all levels; including residents, schools, businesses, private and nonprofit sectors, faith-based organizations and each department of the city government.

Farmington Hills is one of four cities in Oakland County that runs its own Emergency Management program pursuant to Public Act 390 of 1976 (PA 390). The Emergency Management team consists of three certified Professional Emergency Managers, Department Heads from each City Department; and is overseen by the Mayor, City Council and City Manager. EM members continually train and drill for all hazards: locally, with neighboring communities, with Oakland County Department of Homeland Security, Michigan State Police Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.

In the event of an emergency that is beyond the scope of local resources, the Mayor would activate the Emergency Operations Plan (EOP). This would initiate the Emergency Management Team (EMT) to open the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to begin responding to the emergency. The most recent EOC activation was in October of 2017 when a 48” water main owned and operated by the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) burst. While the EOC was activated for one week to manage this incident, the Emergency Management Team spent months working on the community recovery and continues working with regional partners to prevent and mitigate future water main issues.

Sirens

The nine outdoor warning sirens in Farmington Hills are activated by the Oakland County Department of Homeland Security in conjunction with the National Weather Service.

It is important to know that the sirens in Oakland County are an “outdoor” warning system, and are not intended to be heard indoors. Because of this, all residents are encouraged to have a weather radio for indoor warning.

Regular testing of the sirens for 2019 will begin on the first Saturday in March – November at 1:00pm The exception is Saturday April 6th which is replaced by a mid-week test on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 1:00pm for Severe Weather Awareness Week. Sirens are not activated in December, January or February.